Installing Build Tools

This page describes setting up the build environment for QMK. These instructions cover AVR processors (such as the atmega32u4).

Note: If it is your first time here, Check out the "Complete Newbs guide" instead

Linux

To ensure you are always up to date, you can just run sudo util/qmk_install.sh. That should always install all the dependencies needed. This will run apt-get upgrade.

You can also install things manually, but this documentation might not be always up to date with all requirements.

The current requirements are the following, but not all might be needed depending on what you do. Also note that some systems might not have all the dependencies available as packages, or they might be named differently.

This is the recommended method. If you don't have homebrew, install it! It's very much worth it for anyone who works in the command line. Note that the make and make install portion during the homebrew installation of avr-gcc@7 can take over 20 minutes and exhibit high CPU usage.

Windows with msys2 (recommended)

The best environment to use, for Windows Vista through any later version (tested on 7 and 10), is msys2.

Windows 10 (deprecated)

Creators Update

If you have Windows 10 with Creators Update or later, you can build and flash the firmware directly. Before the Creators Update, only building was possible. If you don't have it yet or if are unsure, follow these instructions.

Windows Subsystem for Linux

In addition to the Creators Update, you need Windows 10 Subystem for Linux, so install it following these instructions. If you already have the Windows 10 Subsystem for Linux from the Anniversary update it's recommended that you upgrade it to 16.04LTS, because some keyboards don't compile with the toolchains included in 14.04LTS. Note that you need to know what your are doing if you chose the sudo do-release-upgrade method.

Git

If you already have cloned the repository on your Windows file system you can ignore this section.

You will need to clone the repository to your Windows file system using the normal Git for Windows and not the WSL Git. So if you haven't installed Git before, download and install it. Then set it up, it's important that you setup the e-mail and user name, especially if you are planning to contribute.

Once Git is installed, open the Git Bash command and change the directory to where you want to clone QMK; note that you have to use forward slashes, and that your c drive is accessed like this /c/path/to/where/you/want/to/go. Then run git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware, this will create a new folder qmk_firmware as a subfolder of the current one.

Toolchain Setup

The Toolchain setup is done through the Windows Subsystem for Linux, and the process is fully automated. If you want to do everything manually, there are no other instructions than the scripts themselves, but you can always open issues and ask for more information.

Open "Bash On Ubuntu On Windows" from the start menu.

Go to the directory where you cloned qmk_firmware. Note that the paths start with /mnt/ in the WSL, so you have to write for example cd /mnt/c/path/to/qmk_firmware.

Run util/wsl_install.sh and follow the on-screen instructions.

Close the Bash command window, and re-open it.

You are ready to compile and flash the firmware!

Some Important Things to Keep in Mind

You can run util/wsl_install.sh again to get all the newest updates.

Your QMK repository need to be on a Windows file system path, since WSL can't run executables outside it.

The WSL Git is not compatible with the Windows Git, so use the Windows Git Bash or a windows Git GUI for all Git operations

You can edit files either inside WSL or normally using Windows, but note that if you edit makefiles or shell scripts, make sure you are using an editor that saves the files with Unix line endings. Otherwise the compilation might not work.

Double-click on the 1-setup-path-win batch script to run it. You'll need to accept a User Account Control prompt. Press the spacebar to dismiss the success message in the command prompt that pops up.

Right-click on the 2-setup-environment-win batch script, select "Run as administrator", and accept the User Account Control prompt. This part may take a couple of minutes, and you'll need to approve a driver installation, but once it finishes, your environment is complete!

If you have trouble and want to ask for help, it is useful to generate a Win_Check_Output.txt file by running Win_Check.bat in the \util folder.

Docker

If this is a bit complex for you, Docker might be the turn-key solution you need. After installing Docker CE, run the following command from the qmk_firmware directory to build a keyboard/keymap:

This will compile the targeted keyboard/keymap and leave the resulting .hex or .bin file in the QMK directory for you to flash. If :keymap is omitted, the default keymap is used. Note that the parameter format is the same as when building with make.

You can also start the script without any parameters, in which case it will ask you to input the build parameters one by one, which you may find easier to use:

If you're on Linux, this should work out of the box. On Windows and macOS, it requires Docker Machine to be running. This is tedious to set up, so it's not recommended; use QMK Toolbox instead.

!> Docker for Windows requires Hyper-V to be enabled. This means that it cannot work on versions of Windows which don't have Hyper-V, such as Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10 Home.

Vagrant

If you have any problems building the firmware, you can try using a tool called Vagrant. It will set up a virtual computer with a known configuration that's ready-to-go for firmware building. OLKB does NOT host the files for this virtual computer. Details on how to set up Vagrant are in the vagrant guide.